Thursday, or Thereabouts - November 7, 2013

Return of the Aura

Canterbury Cathedral (deliberate blur)

I re-discovered her late last Thursday afternoon, Halloween of all days, hanging out in an article about the tracking of infectious diseases. I cast my eyes upon a page in the U of T Magazine, and there she was; a vague patch of blurriness resembling a smear of Vaseline across the text, a bit wavy, like a heat shimmer. I looked away from the page and she seemed to vanish. I looked back to the page and she waved back at me, taunting me, annoying me and yes, scaring me just a little. Okay, maybe it was a bit more than a little. I checked my blood pressure (118/75) and my blood sugar (4.9). I checked one eye and then the other - her smear campaign was clearly an equal opportunity employer who enjoyed being smack dab in the centre of my view. I smiled in a mirror and stuck my tongue out. I checked that my health card was in my wallet. 

I turned around to my desktop to have a wee chat with Dr. Google. Migraine aura without the headache you say? I haven't had a visual display of wavy lines and shimmers preceding a migraine since my early twenties and now I had one but no blinding headache? Well it's never a good thing to leave diagnosis entirely to the Internet school of medicine, so by Tuesday, with no clearing in sight and a hypersensitivity to light and sound, I headed off to my eye doc. No fault found. A thorough exam including retinal scan came up with a diagnosis of ocular migraine. 

So I'm left with my aura. I've tried to make friends with her, but really I'd just like her to leave, NOW. She's playing havoc with my NaNoWriMo project, but on the upside my inner critic can't be bothered reading over blurry writing and so is unemployed. Bonus! And I'm pretending to be on a cruise where Internet is prohibitively expensive and often very slow. Three fifteen minute sessions a day limits my time in front of a flickering screen. It's a quiet softly lit space with a pen and stacks of paper. What's not to like?

(NaNoWriMo Update: I have fallen a tad behind. 3947/6000)

©2013 April Hoeller